Fluencia Lessons

This Fluencia review does not differ to many others in that I believe the course is of a high quality.

The curriculum covers a wide range of content topics and the lessons are structured and thorough.

Unlike the exercises within similar language courses from apps like Duolingo, the lessons are actually quite challenging.

Each lesson within the unit block is broken down into the following categories. The weighting of these varies but generally they are all covered, to some extent, within each unit.

Conversation
Vocabulary
Grammar
Pronunciation
Culture
Review

In honesty, I did find the format a little repetitive. There is not a great deal of variation between exercises.

For some lessons, you have multiple choice options. For others, you may have to actually fill in the blank yourself, again like Duolingo and Busuu.

As you progress with Fluencia, you’ll see that there are also drag and drop and translation exercises, as well as dictation opportunities to better your Spanish pronunciation.

This point relates to spoken Spanish, so I’ll discuss conversation a little next.

Speaking Spanish with Fluencia

As mentioned, the Spanish you will hear throughout Fluencia’s course is Latin American, but there are speakers from a number of Latin American countries.

My one complaint here would be that there is no Spanish speaker from Spain.

I understand that the Spanish accent from Spain is very different and it’s better to avoid confusing people, but it would be useful to get an introduction to this accent as I plan to travel to Europe.

Within Fluencia’s conversation lessons, you are required to listen to a dialogue and then answer questions about the cultural or personal content that has been covered.

Again, I like this format as it improves your Spanish listening skills and gets you familiar with actually listening to native Spanish speakers.

If I have one complaint about this part of Fluencia’s course, I would say it would have been more useful to respond to each dialogue by speaking. Instead, you simply select options in a multiple choice format.

I just think I’d have been a bit less passive if I had to speak more, but that’s on me!

When I used Duolingo, I found that the answer is usually quite logical.

It’s useful that with Fluencia, more than one answer could be correct; the trick is understanding the context.

Like I said, it’s good practice and gets you listening to more Spanish.

Finally, Fluencia has in-built speech recognition so that you can practice your Spanish speaking.

It’s okay but by no means the best software I have used with language learning.

That said, their main aim here is to introduce you to the language and get you confident speaking Spanish, and it’s fine for that.

Conversation & Spanish Speaking Practice

As mentioned, the course starts with complete beginner material and gradually becomes more advanced. The same can be said for all of Fluencia’s course categories, including conversation.

I liked the fact that the recordings are real people, as is also the case with many other course options such as Rocket Spanish, Rosetta Stone and Babbel.

As a Spanish learner, this is pretty important because it’s more like daily life – I’m never going to have a proper conversation with Artificial Intelligence!

Fluencia Review – Spanish Vocabulary

The vocabulary section is as you would expect. It’s an opportunity to learn new Spanish words.

Each unit of Fluencia’s course has 2-3 lessons that focus on improving your vocabulary.

This particular course component is not very engaging. That said, I have tried learning Spanish vocabulary online with plenty of free trials from the likes of Pimsleur, Busuu and Babbel.

Personally, I am yet to find a way to learn vocabulary that is fun.

With Fluencia, you just have to match the word with the image you see on the screen (this is a similar method to the Babbel vocabulary sections).

This comes in multiple choice form and you have the chance to write the word, the same as on Duolingo.

There’s also the opportunity to actually listen to the Spanish word you need to write.

This is good for improving your spelling but you’re not going to become a writer in Spanish through this method!

I’m not really painting a good picture of the vocabulary section, but that’s only because I found it a bit easy.

You’re just writing a word that you can listen to or see an image of. Anyway, it’s still useful as quite often it’s the first time you’ve actually seen or heard that word in Spanish.

The vocabulary lessons uses voice recognition software.

It’s not great, but I now know a ton of Spanish words that I didn’t know before I took the course.

I’m not going to tell you you’re going to have heaps of fun when you learn Spanish phrases and vocabulary with Fluencia! But, it’s not bad.

Fluencia Review – Learning Spanish Grammar

Admittedly, I didn’t paint a good picture of the vocabulary part of the units.

By contrast, I was really impressed with the grammar lessons. In fact, I would say they are the best part of the whole course.

Grammar was always the part of Spanish that seemed most boring and was most unclear to me, but I think the grammar exercises are as good, if not better, than any other online Spanish course I have used.

I used Fluencia alongside Spanish for Beginners with James, which also provides clear and simple explanations for beginners in Spanish.

The grammar section is not completely exercise focused. Before you actually take part in any grammar exercises, you you are given grammar explanations with plenty of examples for a range of scenarios.

This simplified Spanish grammar for me, (I know it’s beginner stuff, but still) in a way that textbooks at school were never able to. Maybe that’s just how I learn best.

When you do get round to taking part in Fluencia’s grammar exercises, you need to have understood the grammar explanations.

Within the Fluencia grammar sections there are grammar tables that you can use as a reference when conjugating Spanish verbs.

Fluencia’s grammar sections are pretty tough. However, I think Spanish grammar is going to be difficult however you approach it, until you’re at a pretty advanced level.

I like that with Fluencia you learn Spanish grammar through context in a way that is interactive.

That’s probably why I never liked learning grammar with textbooks – you miss out on this way of learning.

At the end of each grammar section you are provided with a range of multiple-choice questions which checks whether you’ve learned the grammar.

The audio repeats the correct answer to you, whether you get it wrong or right.

Learning Spanish Pronunciation with Fluencia

The pronunciation part of each unit contains a range of topics and content, ranging from adjectives and nouns to Spanish around the world and exclamations using qué.

Much like the lesson structure and grammar section, this is another part of Fluencia’s course that I think is well thought out, effective and engaging.

I mentioned Fluencia’s voice recognition system earlier but I will actually provide my opinion of it now. To be honest I don’t think it’s up to much, and it’s the core of the pronunciation section.

In this sense, it probably lets the course down a little. However, listening to the texts on screen is excellent because (as I mentioned) the speakers are native.

I wasn’t expecting to be fluent in Spanish by the time I finished the Fluencia course, but I did hope I’d feel able to hold a conversation with a native speaker.

The problem is that I am yet to do so.

Flaws in the Pronunciation Section

One thing to note in this Fluencia review is that the course doesn’t give you any face to face contact with a native speaker, even though the conversation lessons do allow you to practice speaking, to some extent.

Despite Fluencia’s speech recognition and the hundreds of excerpts of native dialogue, (which by the way is super useful), it’s in no way like speaking with a real human!

So, overall I thought the pronunciation section was very good but upon completion of the course you will probably want to practice speaking with a Spanish tutor.

I am already doing this and using italki to do so. I recommend italki because you can pay as you go for lessons with casual teachers or more serious teachers, depending on your approach.

Other services you could use are Baselang (unlimited Spanish lessons with native speakers for a fixed monthly fee) or Speechling.

With Speechling, you can submit recordings of yourself speaking Spanish and a teacher will actually get back to you with feedback to help you improve.

Another possible platform you can use is Verbling. This is pretty much the same as italki.

The Culture Section

I want to take the time in this Fluencia review to say that the cultural sections in Fluencia’s course are some of the best I have found online.

Obviously, you don’t get this kind of learning from platforms that involve face to face learning with a teacher, so this is another reason I would give Fluencia a go before trying to learn from scratch with a native speaker.

The cultural lessons with Fluencia are great; they give an in-depth overview of numerous aspects of Hispanic cultures, covering a wide range of topics in an informative way.

Most of the texts within the cultural section are in English, but you can highlight certain words and listen to their pronunciation in Spanish.

Another course that I have tried that includes a cultural section is Rocket Spanish.

The Review Section

Each unit has a review section which goes through what’s been covered up until that point.

The length of the review and the exercises that Fluencia presents you with make it the hardest part of each unit.

Each exercise focuses on three main aspects.

Dictation
Drag and drop
Translation

The Review Feature

Fluencia requires you to complete the review section of each unit in order to progress naturally.

Make sure you’re not passive when learning or this part could be quite challenging!

Note: This does not mean you have to take the Fluencia course in one linear direction.

You can actually skip whole sections if you want to. So, for example, if you want to skip to the grammar or culture section then you can.

The Cost of Learning Spanish with Fluencia

FREE: Fluencia offers a free trial which gives you access to 15 lessons.

MONTHLY: A monthly subscription costs $14.95.

Fluencia provides a 50% discount on 12 month and 24-month subscriptions.

12-month cost: $95.40
24-month cost: $166.80

The monthly plan is excellent value.

Compared with the other language learning competition mentioned, the 12-month plan is also good value.

I would not recommend the two year plan. Whilst it is good value, it should not take you that long to complete the course!

Fluencia Review Summary

If there is one opinion you take away from this Fluencia review it should be this – I think Fluencia is one of the best Spanish learning platforms out there in terms of value for money.

The course goes from complete beginner to intermediate/advanced in a well thought through, natural and well structured way.

The reading and listening exercises are comprehensive. Anybody who takes the course will find themselves understanding Spanish grammar much more clearly than most textbooks can teach.

While there are some speaking exercises, Fluencia needs to improve its speech recognition software.

If you are a Spanish beginner, I think you will like Fluencia. However, you will need to practice with a tutor after the course.

For this, I recommend using italki or Speechling.

The tutors with italki are cheap and flexible with schedules.

To summarise this Fluencia review, I highly recommend giving the course a go.

You can take the first 15 lessons for free anyway before committing, just to see if you like it.

Fluencia is the best Spanish course of its type that I have tried, but you will need to speak with a Spanish tutor to improve your speaking skills.